Dead Man’s Daughter - Roz Watkins

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I could barely hear. ‘I’m tired. . . Will you make sure I’m okay?’

      I swallowed, thinking of all that blood. I could smell it in her hair. ‘Yes,’ I whispered into the top of her head, ignoring all the reasons I couldn’t make any promises. ‘I’ll make sure you’re okay.’

       *

      We eventually arrived at the edge of the woods, and crossed the road to reach Elaine’s cottage. I hammered on the door and it flew straight open. I wrenched off my muddy boots and sodden socks, followed Elaine through to a faded living room, and lowered Abbie onto the sofa.

      ‘Get some blankets around her,’ I said. ‘I’ll be back.’ I dashed barefoot over the road to my car, grabbed some evidence bags, and slipped my feet into the spare trainers I’d shoved in there in a fit of sensibleness. My toes felt as if they’d been dipped in ice, rubbed with a cheese-grater, and held in front of a blow-torch.

      Back at the house, Elaine had swaddled Abbie in a couple of towels and about five fleecy blankets that looked like they could be the dog’s. I decided it was best not to smell them.

      ‘Do you have anything she could wear?’ I asked. ‘So we can get that wet nightdress off her?’

      Elaine hesitated. ‘I still have . . . ’

      Abbie looked up from her nest of fleeces and mumbled, ‘Where’s the dog?’

      Elaine called him, and Abbie stroked the top of his head gently, her eyelids drooping, while Elaine went to fetch some clothes.

      The room was clean and tidy but had a museum feel, as if it had been abandoned years ago and not touched since. Something caught my eye beside the window behind the sofa. A collection of dolls, sitting in rows on a set of shelves. I’d never been a fan of dolls and had dismembered those I’d been given as a child, in the name of scientific and medical research. And there was something odd about these. I took a step towards them and looked more closely.

      A floorboard creaked. I jumped and spun round. Elaine stood in the doorway, holding up some soft blue pyjamas. ‘These?’ They must have belonged to a child a little older than Abbie.

      I nodded, walked over and took the pyjamas, then sat on the sofa next to Abbie. I opened my mouth to thank Elaine and ask if she had a child of her own, but I glanced first at her face. It was flat, as if her muscles had been paralysed. I closed my mouth again.

      I persuaded Abbie to let me take off the sopping-wet, blood-soaked nightdress and replace it with the pyjamas. Her teeth chattered, and she clutched my scarf. I put the nightdress in an evidence bag.

      ‘My sister Carrie knitted that for me.’ I was better at saying her name now. ‘When I was very young. It’s the longest scarf I’ve ever seen.’

      Abbie touched the scarf against her cheek, closed her eyes and sank back into the sofa.

      I looked up at Elaine. ‘Do you know if she lives at Bellhurst House? She said she lived in the woods, but she’s pretty confused.’

      Elaine stared blankly at me. ‘Yes, I suppose she must. They own the land that goes down to the gorge.’

      A pitter-patter of my heart. The guilt that was so familiar. Again I tried to remember what the woman from Bellhurst House had reported. Someone in the woods, someone looking into their windows, someone following her. She hadn’t lived alone; I remembered that. There was definitely a husband, possibly children.

      ‘Is that your house, Abbie? Bellhurst House?’

      She nodded.

      ‘A car went down there,’ Elaine said. ‘In the night. I couldn’t sleep. Down the lane. I didn’t think much of it at the time. But now I’m wondering . . . ’

      ‘What time?’

      ‘I’m not sure exactly. About three or four, I think.’

      ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Police are on their way to the house. What colour was the car?’

      ‘I couldn’t see – it was too dark.’

      I turned to Abbie. ‘Do you remember anything about what happened?’ I said. ‘Where the blood came from?’

      She leant close to the dog and wrapped her arms around him. He gave me a long-suffering look. Abbie spoke softly into his ear, so I could barely make out the words. ‘Everyone always dies. Jess. And Dad . . . ’

      I looked at her blood-stained hair. ‘Who’s Jess?’

      ‘My sister.’

      I imagined her sister and her father bleeding to death in those dark woods, surrounded by statues of terrified children. ‘Where are your sister and your dad, Abbie?’

      No answer. She closed her eyes and flopped sideways towards me.

      I caught sight of the dolls again.

      It felt as if someone had lightly touched the back of my neck with a cold hand.

      It was the eyes.

      In some of the dolls, the whole eye was white – no iris or pupil. In others, the iris was high, so you just saw the edge of it as if the eyes had rolled up inside the doll’s head.

      I turned away, feeling Abbie’s soft weight against me.

      I skidded my car to a halt on an icy, stone-flagged courtyard in front of the pillared entrance of Bellhurst House. Back-up hadn’t yet arrived and the place was deserted. I’d left Abbie with a PC at Elaine’s, but my stomach was knotted with concern for her relatives. They could be lying inside, gasping for breath, blood pouring from their wounds. I jumped from the car.

      The house was Victorian Gothic, in the style of a small lunatic asylum. The kind of place where you’d find inexplicable cold corners and notice the cats avoiding certain rooms. It had two spiky-roofed, bay-windowed halves, flanking a tower topped with a witches’ cap roof.

      I bashed a brass lion-head knocker against the oak door. No answer, but when I shoved the door, it opened into a narrow hallway. A stained-glass window splashed colours onto the carpet. I stopped a moment and listened, aware that I shouldn’t go in alone.

      I stepped into the hall. ‘Police! Is anyone there?’

      Nothing. The house was so silent, it hurt my ears.

      I checked downstairs. There was evidence of a break-in – a forced window and glass crunching underfoot in a utility room – but I didn’t stop to investigate.

      The stairs were narrow and all slightly different heights, making it hard not to trip. They led onto a landing which smelt of library books and damp coins. I crossed the creaky-boarded floor and poked my head into the first bedroom. It must have been Abbie’s room, or possibly her sister’s – decorated in the pink and purple that some little girls seemed to insist on, to the horror of feminist mothers. I gave it a quick glance – no blood – and retreated onto the landing. Another door opened into a larger room.

      I froze. A man lay sprawled on his back on a double bed. Blood had sprayed onto the white wall beside him – a jagged line of crimson blobs with tails trailing below. More blood smeared the white duvet, the sheets, and the cream carpet by the bed. It was fresh and vivid, its coppery smell filling my nostrils.

      I rushed over and checked his pulse, but I knew he was dead. I felt a wave of despair for Abbie – so strong my knees went weak. Was this her father?

      I could never get used to these moments. The visceral shock of someone being dead. The knowledge that his family would have to live forever with this. Abbie would always be the girl whose father was murdered. Possibly the girl who saw her father murdered. This would be with her for the rest of her life.

      I took a moment to look at the man’s face. To think of him as a person, before he became a job, a problem to be

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